We should have listened to Andy Warhol. In the 1940’s he predicted “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” If only this were true for Kim Kardashian, who’s 15 minutes have turned into 15 years of being famous simply for being famous. Kardashian became an American icon primarily for her role trailblazing the ‘Selfie Movement’. In fact, her 30 million followers on Instagram will be excited to hear that Kim is releasing a new book titled ‘Selfish, containing over 300 pages of intimate self portraits taken by Kardashian in various stages of dress and undress. “They are only a small fraction of the thousands of selfies we considered for publication.” Thousands? I figured there would be millions.
Kardashian’s narcissism is a snapshot into a global social phenomenon. Just open your Instagram account and bask in the incessant duck face photos. Social media is a virtual museum warehousing thousands of personal pictures from everyone eight to eighty standing in front of a bathroom mirror trying to get the perfect shot from the perfect angle to project their perfect self. SnapChat alone processes 350 million photos a day, most of which are selfie’s. In fact, the phenomenon, like cancer, metastasized the world in 2013 forcing Oxford Dictionary to name ‘Selfie’ the word of the year. Posturing in front of a mirror with an iPhone seems the perfect preoccupation for our narcissistic selves. But what is this exposing about our culture, and our personal pursuit for significance?
For starters, every culture throughout history has had its own icons, that individual or set of individuals who embody all we desire to be. In America, it is the celebrity, and more importantly, our unending desire to become one. Technology and social media provide the channels to achieve notoriety, as we project ourselves to as many people as possible. But is this really what it means to be human; spending our lives in desperate pursuit of significance? Is celebrity status really the end goal of human existence, or is there something far more fulfilling?
As Christians, we understand that Jesus came into the world not simply to reveal the nature of God, but to show us what it means to be fully human. It seems God isn’t really into Selfie's, He is into us. So much so that he became one of us by taking on the same shriveled vulnerability we all share. His skin, his flesh was identical to ours in every way. Over the last few centuries the church has unwittingly projected onto Jesus a human perfectibility that is incompatible with the human condition. Jesus was not an ‘uberman’, or a fleshy version of some angelic being. He was fully human and fully divine. And because we do not accept our own concrete humanity with all our flaws, we are less capable of appreciating the fully human Jesus. The writer of Hebrews reminds us, “He had to be made like them, fully human in every way”. So much so that “He didn’t look like anything or anyone of consequence—he had no physical beauty to attract our attention.” Contrary to our high Christology, Jesus did not embody the magnificence of Michelangelo’s David. Anthropologists now know that the average male height in first century Palestine was all of 5’ 2’’ tall. Are we comfortable with this picture of Jesus? A Jesus who may have struggled with his weight, who may have been bald, and according to Scripture, was not above being tempted to subvert his own life’s mission and purpose?
It is only in learning to accept the limitations of this perfect human being that allows us the capability to accept our own human deficiencies, as well as the limitations of others. He unveils not only the divinity to human persons; Jesus reveals humanity to itself. The humanity of Jesus is the mirror through which we see our own humanity as it should be, not the false self we parade through social media.
Therefore, if we keep in mind that Jesus reveals both the nature of God and the essence of the human person, what does it signify that he spent the majority of his life in complete obscurity? Or, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.” In a culture of incessant self-promotion, Jesus demonstrates the path of downward mobility, reminding us that “whoever is least among you—he is the greatest”. As Henri Nouwen reminds us:
“The one who was from the beginning with God and who was God revealed himself as a small, helpless child; as a refugee in Egypt; as an obedient adolescent and inconspicuous adult: as a penitent disciple of the Baptizer; as a preacher from Galilee, followed by some simple fishermen; as a man who ate with sinners and talked with strangers; as an outcast, a criminal, a threat to his people. He moved from powerful to powerlessness, from greatness to smallness, from success to failure, from strength to weakness, from glory to ignominy. The whole life of Jesus of Nazareth was a life in which all upward mobility was resisted…The divine way is indeed the downward way.”
Though we share the same skin Jesus wore, we search for significance, even celebrity status to validate our human condition. Yet in Him we experience the fullness of the divinity enfleshed in the ordinary. Think about this, God became flesh and lived almost his entire life in utter obscurity! What does this tell us about our own human existence? Simply, a life well lived shouldn’t consist of ‘Selfish’ promotion, but selflessness. Maybe if we stopped spending so much time looking at ourselves, we would have room in our hearts to see others. Jesus reminds us that ‘Whatever you did to the least of these, you did unto me.” It’s hard to see the least of these with an Iphone in front of your face. Loving God more than self is not some abstract ethic, it is overwhelmingly physical. "It means seeing in every person the face of the Lord to be served, and to serve him concretely."
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